Later school start times have emerged as a potential policy to improve the sleep and educational outcomes of teenagers. This study uses a quasi-experimental comparative interrupted time series approach to examine a 90-min delay in start times in an urban district in North Carolina. Results show that the later start time resulted in more sleep for…

State reading exams are crucial in determining students' reading proficiency. The problem is students in inner-city Title 1 middle schools in New York City are consistently performing below the national average on the mandated New York State Reading Exam. The purpose of this qualitative exploratory case study was to explore barriers teachers and…

Validity studies of college admissions tests have found that, on average, students who are Black or Hispanic earn lower freshman grade-point averages (FGPAs) than predicted by these test scores. This differential prediction is used as a measure of bias. These studies, however, conflate student and school characteristics. The differential…

In an era of globalized education policy, the problems of equitably funding public schools have universal relevance. Critical Resource Theory (CReT), a conceptual extension of Critical Theory (CT), uses data generated from quantitative analyses of public funding to inform policy and produce more equitable resources and outcomes for low-wealth…

Despite considerable efforts in recent years to encourage Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) interest and participation among youth, STEM interest during adolescence continues to decline. Recently, researchers, educators, and policymakers have used a learning ecology perspective to better understand the development and…

This paper evaluates the academic impact of a growth-mindset intervention on students starting the secondary level in public schools in urban Peru. ¡Expande tu Mente! is a 90-minute school session aimed at instilling the notion that a person's own intelligence is malleable. Students in schools randomly assigned to treatment showed a small…

A primary goal of teacher preparation programs should be to develop the reflective and critical problem-solving capacities of preservice teachers, especially social justice-oriented programs that prepare teachers to work in urban schools with historically underserved youth. Through an analysis of participants' biweekly posts to discussion boards,…

Few empirical studies describe the interior world of alternative school settings. We conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with 11 alternative school students, discussing factors that contribute to absenteeism as well as the circumstances that led them to enroll in an alternative setting. We find that students' regular attendance is…

Introduction: High school students' self-reports about their perception of barriers, optimism and attachments in relation to the postsecondary transition were examined. Method: Factor analysis of an inventory administered to 1044 high school students (573 males and 471 females) who attended six urban schools in Scotland identified three factors.…

The digital divide is an important issue that has been addressed in the world for several decades. However, little attention has been paid to the special population that emerged in cities of developing countries: rural migrant workers. Previous studies have shown that family background is a potential determinant of digital inequality among…

This study was a yearlong investigation over writing instruction with one class of ninth grade students in an urban, "underperforming" high school. Using qualitative methods with embedded quantitative features, findings revealed students benefited little from the writing instruction they received. In fact, most students showed virtually…

Prior research has discussed high school counselors' role in students' experience, but counselors' understandings of their work and of students has received little commentary. We interviewed counselors in a high-poverty, low-performing urban school district in which two structural elements shape how counselors make sense of their work. First,…

Research shows that gang-associated youth are less likely to complete high school and earn a postsecondary educational credential. However, scholars have not determined "why" gang youth do not persist into higher education. This ethnographic study aims to focus on the narratives of 13 Latino high school young men to understand what…

Mobile geospatial technologies enable high school students to engage in authentic scientific data collection and analysis that promote spatial-thinking and reasoning skills, as well as problem-solving in a school's local environment. We developed and implemented an Ecological Services investigation aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards…

Secondary schools in the United States have been changing with the increased arrival of refugee students with interrupted formal education (SIFE), especially at the secondary schools. Refugee SIFE are faced with barriers developing both language and academic skills. This article describes some of the findings of an ethnographic research study that…